A Force For Peace

James Baker's new ally for peace seems to think that the way to peace is to "wipe out Israel". Interestingly, he compares that with the USSR, which was not "wiped out" (in fact, the Russian Prime Minister is still happlily poisoning adversaries with pelonium the last I heard). The USSR imploded after it was challenged by Ronald Reagan. Israel shows very few signs of implosion, but one would suspect that when a nutcase holocaust denyer that has already indicated that he is bent on creating nukes to destroy says "wipe out", he doesn't mean "implode".

The MSM and apparently a whole bunch of the US wool bearing population think that this guy is going to "help us fix Iraq". I suppose "wipe out" and "fix" could be the same in some quarters.

Oh, Bold prediction. This was up on CNN at 11PM EST, don't expect it to get a lot of coverage. Such things could confuse the sheep ... is denying the holocaust and talking about wiping out Israel a good thing now?

ISG / Holocaust Denial?

The vaunted Iraq Study Group (ISG) thinks that the way to "peace" in Iraq is to bring Iran and Syria in to "help" the US, and to link peace in Iraq with Israel making concessions. The ISG is of course being hailed as "genius", while the MSM wonders if the idiot Bush will be able to take advice.

NPR reported tonight (so it MUST be true), and it is also reported here that one of our prospective "allies" in this diplomatic process is having a major conference sponsored by their President on the subject of "Did the Holocaust Actually Happen?"

I imagine that if the ISG finds Iran to be a credible ally, then this must be considered a credible question that needs to be looked into? Anyone that thinks that the way forward on improving a conflict is to link it with a 4,000 year old conflict would seem to prone to a whole lot of odd thinking, no doubt including holocaust denial. James Baker, your ride is waiting just on the other side of a comet, drink some poison and they will beam you up right away.

Does anyone actually believe that anyone in the MSM, left, Democrat party, Iran, Al Quaeda, Hamas or any other group in favor of "cut and run" has any other objective other than "get US troops out of Iraq NO MATTER WHAT"? When people believe that something is worth "any cost" it is a pretty good indication that the reasoning part of the brain has stopped completely.

North Dakota

This past week was spent traveling to and from North Dakota. The trip on the weekend had been planned for months, a trip to watch the Fighting Sioux play in the Ralph Englestad Arena in Grand Forks North Dakota. That trip came off with only two of us attending rather than three as had been planned due to the events of earlier in the week.

"The Ralph" as they call it was impressive beyond belief. The fact that the little counters where you put the mustard on your hot dog are made of marble was what really impressed me. It is of course full of Fighting Sioux symbols, including inlaid in marble in the floor. The "symbols" are a great example of the liberal doctrine of "consistency is not an issue". PETA has taken action against the Green Bay "Packers" because they feel that the Packer name HONORS the idea of killing animals and the job of meat "Packer". Of course with Indian names, the use of the name is DEROGATORY, and OFFENSIVE! There you have it, on one hand a team name is a point of honor, and on the other side, it is a point of offense. As a true liberal would say, "it is all in how you feel about it", and that is just fine. Individually, we can be "right" all the time even with conflicting internal views, but as a society, we better learn to just number our teams.

The early part of the week was filled with 22 hours of driving in a 42 hour period to attend the funeral of a friends father in Williston ND. The road was long, but once the decision was made to go, it seemed like the right way all the way through. It is just fine to use "emotional reasoning" to decide what funerals to go to, just not to tell everyone else what funerals they ought to go to, what their team ought to be named, or how high their taxes ought to be. "The Peace Garden State" isn't the most scenic in the union by my standards, but at least you can see a lot of many parts of it all at once, and there is certainly not much to get in the way of the wind.

So bogging continues to suffer even though the blogging environment is the best that it as ever been. Hopefully I will be able to make up for lost time soon.

The New World

For those of you wondering what has happened to me, the "small task" of doing "the last little bit" on our remodel project has been consuming a huge amount of time the last bit more than a week. Once the new cabinets had been installed in my office, the desire to get "everything right" took over and I've been feverishly moving books in as well as getting lighting, cabling, phones, etc up and running. I REALLY wanted to be using my new Viewsonic VX2025WM 20" monitor for this, but alas the pictures are amoung the many things copying over to my new 300GB drive on my main server box where that is connected from. It is a classic case of "one more thing".
The Family Room
The old family room was L shaped with a big old wood burning fireplace. A complete tear-out, wall moves, and reconstruct. Speakers that will mount on the wall are on order.
The Desk Where I Work
There is still some stuff stacked around, and although this was shot last night, the 19" Viewsonic tube was still hooked up to the server. The Techline units are a BIG change from the "before".
The Comfy Chair
This is the location where I do most of my reading when I get to read. So far in the 12 days since the desk and cabinets went in, I haven't spent any time there either. Part of the fault of that was Holiday travel, retrieval of Christmas wreaths for the Scout Troop, retrieval of son from college, doing a late winterization job on the boat that ought to have been done long ago as well as a good deal of "real job work" that always seems to impinge. So many excuses that I sound just like a liberal.
Firepit From Deck
When we started on the project we had no plans of doing a firepit, or re-doing my office for that matter. Adding a bedroom for my youngest son in the basement required the window be dug down which caused the old landscaping to have to change, which caused the thought process to go down the path of taking care of a landscaping problem that was bothering us at the end of the deck. Similarly, when adding a LAN line in my office required moving out a 20yr old Wal-Mart pressed wood desk that simply fell apart, the project became "extended".
Looking At Firepit from Yard
Looking back at the house from the yard completes the tour. At SOME POINT, I'd like to drag out the higher res camera, have everything perfectly clean and picked up, and THEN shoot the pictures. Maybe I'll get there by like 2010 ;-)

Relativism For the Holidays

This nice little "news article" on
Teaching Thanksgiving has been up on CNN since quite early in the week. The highlight is pretty much right at the top:

Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them.

The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.

Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.

The left finds it important for Americans to honor and respect all other cultures but our own. It is imperative that we "understand their perspective", so Arabs killing Jews is "understandable", anyone hating the US is of course MORE than understandable, it is to be expected, and really just a sign of having a good grasp of reality. The gay lifestyle, any manner of criminal activity (with the exception of white collar crime of course!), and any religion including devil worship (again, except Christianity!) must be understood and respected.

How about the context of over 400 years of history and change being applied to the Pilgrims? Must that be "understood"? Nope! No understanding there, and while the media works hard to very much romanticize the gay life as "just as normal as any other", thus in sore need of marriage, the actual statistics on gay monogamy and health tell quite a different story. No need to be "authentic" there though, the message to be transmitted to the sheep is a different one.

Ah yes, the destruction of values and America. An important agenda that has to be begun early in the schools with the little children. We live in a country free enough to allow public dollars to tear down the very culture paying for the schools and teachers doing the deed. As they say, "only in America".

Notice Anything? 06 Congress

One of my major joys is watching the difference in behavior of the MSM, and indeed most of the general public depending on politics. It is amazing to see how suddenly there are NO QUESTIONS about the elections, no matter how close they were in some districts and senate races, the outcome is GOSPEL. Where is "Diebold"? Where are "the dangers of electronic voting"? Where is "disenfranchised"?

Of course, we know where it all is. From the viewpoint of the MSM, the voters got "the right answer" this time. It is only when the voters get the WRONG answer that they need to go looking for anything. This time "the people have spoken". In 2002 and 2004, which were actually historically the ODD elections, because the party with the Presidency PICKED UP seats, there was a lot of analysis of why the outcomes "didn't mean anything", "might not be valid", and we were "a very divided country". Notice that "we" aren't divided anymore? Certainly from the current view of the MSM, we finally got it right, and now as long as we do 100% what the Democrats want, we will be just fine.

While we are at it, did you notice any convervatives talking about "embarrassment", or "leaving the country"? No? Neither did I, there really hasn't been much in the way of anger or hand-wringing from even the most avowed righties. Isn't that a BIT different from the angry left for the past 6 years? One would think that anyone with their eyes open at all could see that if nothing else, there is a solid difference in temprament as to how conservatives deal with a political loss as opposed to liberals.

Which brings me to a few predictions.

1). Remember when Republicans were last in the minority in the Senate? There were a couple of popular terms back then; "obstructionism" and "not following the will of the people". I boldly declare that those terms will be coming back in the months to come.

2). Remember how courageous it used to be when Clinton brandished the veto pen? I'm betting that "courageous" won't be one of the words used to describe a Bush veto by the MSM.

3). Remember how horrible it was to have investigations of poor Bill Clinton? Why it was positively unfair for the congress to waste it's time investigating the President that was "duly elected by the American people". In fact, any sort of obstruction of Mr "will of the people" was a sign of how evil Republicans were for providing opposition to the wonderful Bill Clinton. Think their tune might be slightly different now?

Well, I'm actually cheating to even call this one a "prediction", NPR and many other liberal outlets are already nearly in heaven over the prospects of a Henry Waxman and others getting a whole bevy of investigations going as rapidly as possible. All of a sudden, the views on "investigations" have turned around precisely 180 degrees!

I can't leave predictions behind without calling up a prediction from last summer made in Why Everyone Believes I predicted that even though the MSM told us a year ago that there would be more and more severe hurricanes every year due to global warming, if there were not, the MSM would fail to tell their followers the sheep about it. Well, hurricane season is now over and even though they did their best to pump up a couple of tropical storms as "MAYBE Hurricanes", they never made it and we had ZERO hurricanes hit the US this year! Darn!

I can't pick where the stock market is going, I can't pick who is going to win major sports events over the next 5 years, but I CAN predict how the MSM is going to react to stories. If they were reporting events as events, that would be impossible. They are predictable becuase they are idealogues and report their BIAS rather than the news.

 It is their BIAS that is predictable! The MSM is always going to tell you that "someone else is misleading you" ... corporations, Republicans, Fox news, technologists, bloggers, "professionals", religion ... the list goes on and on. The MSM and the entertainment industry is still the most pervasive and powerful information organ out there. YES, there are a few alternatives today and that is very refreshing, but you have to LOOK FOR THEM. If your information seeking is on autopilot you will live in the MSM sheep pen! ESCAPE!

 There is a better life in the real world!

Pleasing the Terrorists

Last Tuesday was a great day for Democrats the MSM, and apparently Terrorists too. While the "Weekly World News" is certainly a right wing publication, you just can't expect to get some of this information from the MSM.

Terror Leaders: Vote Democrat

"Of course Americans should vote Democrat," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, told WND.

"This is why American Muslims will support the Democrats, because there is an atmosphere in America that encourages those who want to withdraw from Iraq. It is time that the American people support those who want to take them out of this Iraqi mud," said Jaara, speaking to WND from exile in Ireland, where he was sent as part of an internationally brokered deal that ended the church siege.

These are the kinds of things that really don't require all that much thought. Do the terrorist groups like the US being on offense? Of course not, it really messes up operations to have your camps bombed, your communications monitored, and leaders that have funding your suicide bombers families in the past sentenced to hang. Much better to see the US working with known terrorist countries to try to save some small piece of face as the lone superpower sulks away in defeat.

One might think it would give some folks pause to be on the same side as the terrorists, but my guess is that they will be just has happy there as they were being on the same side with the USSR.

Diplomatic Solution

Jim Webb Diplomacy

One of the things that I enjoy the most about watching and listening to the MSM is how their biases are so deep, that they are completely unaware of them. Like "air, gravity, and the sun coming up", they just always see the world as "that way", and it never crosses their mind that there could be alternative thought.

Since Tuesday, the world for them has become suddenly sunny and bright. Prior to the election, even the day of the election, and certainly in 2000, 2002, and 2004, there had been a lot of concerns about electronic voting, suppression of the vote, the accuracy of counts, and a whole set of issues. Wednesday AM, all those concerns magically took wing and flew from the minds of the press as if they had never been there at all. "The people had spoken", there was no way that their could be a question of "irregularities" or any sort of impropriety in this election no matter how close the race. The right answer had clearly and finally been reached.

Unlike in previous elections, notably 1994, 2000, and 2004, when the people looking to take the new positions stood up and said "partnership, not partisanship", they were TOTALLY believeable, there was no need to raise any issue of previous statements by them or their campaign, or to ask specific questions about just what kind of compromise they might think would be a good answer to a tough question in this "partnership". When Bush said "I'm a uniter, not a divider", somehow the MSM just didn't see it as being very believeable. There were many questions that needed to be asked. I have no problem with that stance actually, I think the press SHOULD ask tough questions ... it is just that they ought to be asked to both sides. Politicians of BOTH stripes are very worthy of more than an ounce of skepticism.

The quoted article is a classic. A newly elected Senator, elected by a tiny margin over a Republican incumbent, brought down by saying "Macaca", a term that somebody decided "sounds like it might be monkey". The Republican conceeds not only without askng for a re-count, abut with no complaints of "intimidation, lines at the polls, etc"; he lets the system work like Nixon in '60. Of course the media not only has no questions at all about the outcome of a close election, it doesn't even see it as worthy to ask a SINGLE THING about why a sigle newly elected Senator thinks they set foreign policy, nor any specifics of just who it is that they are going to work this "diplomatic solution" with. It is just flat out "good", no need to ask a single thing.

I'll long remember the Time Magazine cover in '94 that showed a characature of Newt Gingerich made up as the Grinch with the caption "How Mean Is He?". Somehow I don't expect a similar cover with Nancy Pelosi on it? Nope, the press is completely unbiased.

Good Day for a Funeral

The news was pretty much all in before I got to sleep last night. The only good news was that Tim Pawlenty retained the Governors seat in MN. It may mean that those of us that work for a living can keep a tiny percentage of our paychecks.

I really did go to a funeral today, an uncle that lived a mile up the road from me in my youth. Eighty eight years old and went pretty fast when he went, lived in his home with his wife right up to the last few weeks. The end doesn't get all that much better, lots of family and freinds at a church where he faithfully attendeded. A good life, a fairly quick end, and hope for a better life in heaven. There are worse things than the right kind of a funeral.

Was the Republican loss "the right kind of a funeral". Sorry to say, I really don't see how a thinking person would draw that conclusion, but from the MSM and lefty reactions, it is clear that many mostly feeling people "feel different". The Democrats and MSM didn't run on anything but anger and wishful thinking, so the election didn't really decide anything other than "going 100% negative with no agenda can work".

The Democrats are basically the party of human nature, which is often the same as the party of doing what feels good, or wishful thinking. For a century, they were the party of slavery until Lincoln and the Republicans ended the scourge, but at the very high price of 600K lives. The Democrats sought new lower ground and became the party of Jim Crow for the next 100 years.

They followed that act with some overlap as the party of surrender to communism. Counting the USSR, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China, communism took something in the 50-100million lives at least. Could it have been stopped earlier? It is always hard to tell, but Reagan and the Republicans got it done yet again. Now we face global Islamic terrorism, and the Democrats have found their calling as the party of surrender to a new menace. Yesterday the odds of victory without the loss of millions of lives went down severely. Surgery for cancer is costly even early, it is usually far more expensive or terminal when we wait and "hope for the best".

Something like 80% of Americans were in favor of the war in Iraq when we went in. Osama and company felt that we were weak in Vietnam, Lebannon, and Somalia, and that we would be weak in Iraq. Some of us thought that we would be different after 9-11. More like the WWII generation. Yesterday we proved that Osama is right, we are going to cut and run, and we will pay the price now, the question is just how high it will be.

Some will say "we were lied to". That kind of thinking is beyond wishful and falls to the most human of natures that says "I won't accept responsibility for my own thoughts, decisions, and actions since it makes me feel better to blame someone else". The idea that Bush KNEW that we wouldn't be able to find WMD is simply beyond the pale. Every piece of evidence and rational conjecture that we have says that he acted on the best information he had, as did the CIA, the congress, and indeed the 80% of Americans that felt that we simply couldn't take the risk. The odds that any of our houses will be destroyed by fire are exceedingly low, yet we almost all carry fire insurance. The odds that Saddam harbored WMD were exceedingly high, and seeing him use them or allow others to use them was very beleiveable. WMD wasn't found in the quantity that we expected. Saying that we are CERTAIN that meant he didn't have WMD is like saying that it is certain that there are no fatal car crashes since we have never witnessed one. However, even if he didn't, the VAST majority of Americans, and virtually ALL of our leadership agreed that it was a risk that we could not accept. It is an abdication of responsibility now to suggest that we are not willing to pay the price for carrying through on what in a democracy is a shared responsibility, yet that is what has happened.

Being a Republican means that one is forced to look at reality, but also that we believe in higher good than human nature and therefore hope. It is human to fall short, and Republicans are just has human as anyone, we just try not to worship at the alter of man and praise vice as virtue. Americans voted on emotion. That is very understandable, but also often very expensive. Let us pray to God that undeserved mercy may be ours and the cost in lives is held lower than would be expected by a hand greater than our own.

Election Night

My wife and I are over at the home of a young couple babysitting for their 1 year old boy while they are out on a long awaitned birthday date. Usually I would be glued to the tube and likely will be later, but since this couple isn't a believer in TV, I'm restricted to "only te net", and it is a lot easier to only check a bit less frequently there.

One of the observations of this year is that the MSM seems very happy with "all negative" as long as it is a Democrat strategy. What was the message for the the Democrats this year? At the most innocuous that can be presented, it was "change", but we all know it wasn't really that. "Bush is bad, evil, incompetent, doesn't listen, lies ... etc". "The Republican Congress is corrupt, out of touch, Bush lapdogs, special interest lapdogs, etc".

What positive things did Democrats suggest? None. Then there is the "suppress the vote" move. There is no doubt that Democrats and the MSM had the Foley scandal in their back pocket for a long time, and brought it out when they did simply to suppress the Christian Conservative vote. It is an old trick, they did it in 2000 with the Bush DWI. They even "double dipped" with the Haggard gay sex scandal for good measure under the "nobody has any morals" kind of heading.

At least at this point, the exit polls are showing "corruption" as the top issue. Gee, I wonder if the roles were reversed and Republicans had managed to tag Democrats with that issue, would it be seen as valid by the MSM? Anyone remember how bogus "values" was seen as 2 short years ago?

If this election continues to go like it looks now, at least we will know that 100% negative with a focus on suppression of the base of the other side can work. I'm sure that the MSM will complain bitterly if Republicans ever do anything similar. Think of how much different this is than the "Contract With America". Of course the MSM didn't like that one either, even though it was a very specific agenda. I guess the bottom line is just that the MSM is never going to like Republicans, so one should stop expecting them to somehow give some consideration to being even handed.

What A Democrat Hopes For

The following is from What Will It Take to End the War and it does a pretty good job of hitting the key point of the left that the Democrats have become.

If the Democrats take power with the elections tomorrow, congressional hearings will have a lot of such questions to consider. But what about the moral question? For all of the anguish felt over the loss of American lives, can we acknowledge that there is something proper in the way that hubristic American power has been thwarted? Can we admit that the loss of honor will not come with how the war ends, because we lost our honor when we began it? This time, can we accept defeat?

As always, the answer is defeat for America and defeat for all that would stand up for any form of values in which individuals have responsibility. A favorite phrase that they love to use is "Truth to Power", easily translated into the perpetual anthem of anarchy, "death to authority".

In my youth, the hopeful power to destroy the evil of the overly powerful American capitalist system object of hatred for the left was the Marxist religion of the gulags in the USSR, the "Great Leap Forward" of mass death in China, and the killing fields of Pol Pot. All could "somehow" be blamed on America in the special view of the left. In 1968, they took control of the Democrat party, and now they believe they sit ready to control one of the branches of power yet again.

State controlled mass murderers seemed odd allies in the 60's and 70's, but they were positively benign compared to Muslim Jihadists, Kim Jong-Il, and nuke toting Mullahs in Iran we face today. At least the soulless communist killers mostly had addresses. The addition of global terror forces without addresses that can act in concert with the remaining evil axist powers that do makes the new world much more dangerous.

Well, if the polls are right, at least the victorious Democrats and MSM will have struck a blow in making sure that "hubristic American power" is reduced over the next couple years, with a vacum to be filled by Kim, Iran, and Al Quaeda. I'm sure we can trust those folks to be be rational, reserved and benevolent with their increased freedom of action. Let us all cheer for the defeat of America, the goal of every (oxynoron break) "honest lefty".

Political Football

Don't expect to see the phote above in the MSM very much. They tried to avoid the Kerry gaffe as much as they could, but it still broke out on them, somewhat again because their hand was forced by the bloggers and more conservative media.

My first reaction was that this is a great example of what kind of a guy Kerry really is. I strongly suspect that he just misspoke, but his arrogance and nastiness came through instantly. Call Rush Limbaugh fat, call Bush stupid, and call Tony Snow an empty suit. Gee, if being in Iraq is stupid, then why did Kerry vote for it? Well before he voted for funding the war he had voted for before he voted against funding the same war. One thing that Kerry is very sure of, he is a super smart guy.

My second thought is that while politics has aspects of a game, it would be great if there was some thought of trying to be even handed in the MSM. It is certainly fine when the "other side", Democrat or Republican jump on somebody that screws up, but one would hope that the MSM might be something of a "voice of reason".

Remember Trent Lott? He made a comment at at B-day party for Strom Thurmond about how things might have been better had Strom been elected as a "Dixiecrat" way back in 1948. What did he mean by that? Well, basically nothing but idle comments at an old mans birthday party. The Democrats (fine with me) and the PRESS, piled on completely. Lott was labled a "racist", aplologized immediately, frequently, and abjectly, but to no avail, and he lost is position as majority leader.

What do we see with Kerry? The press running to his defense, making it seem that the REPUBLICANS are somehow "evil" for "taking advantage", and agreeing with him that somehow it is "improper" for Republicans to take his comment for what he said. What he MEANT to, was of course for a sitting US Senator to call the current US President STUPID in wartime for sending US troops into a situation that the same US Senator voted in favor of. Now THAT is pretty much definition of "intelligent" ... but one which the MSM has no problem with.

If there WERE an unbiased press, one might expect that in BOTH of these cases the parties that looked the worst would be the parties that went after the politician that made a gaff and then promptly and honestly apologized. Kerry would have a bit of a problem with that "prompt and honest", but if he hadn't spent so much history living with the lapdog MSM and thinking that having a "D" next to your name means never having to say you are sorry, may have learned the lesson that when you screw up, you need to apologize.

Will the advent of the press having more than one side with blogs, radio, and Fox eventually drive us to sanity? Maybe, but I suspect that the MSM will continue to tack very hard to the left for a long time to come before a truely moderate middle rises up and provides a voice of reason without the need to look at both sides of the market of ideas to get to the point of reason.

Really Gay

A nice liberal columnist as finally defined what it means to be "really gay". Apparently it involves sending lurid IM messages to underage boys. Not ALL that surprising, since as was pointed out, for at least gay Democrat members of the House of Representatives it also involved having sex with underage boys AND keeping your job for over twenty years.

Leonard Pitts lays it all out for us here. You see Republicans and the "religious right" hate gays because they don't want gay marriage. I guess that is sort of like hating business if you want higher taxes, or hating security for Americans if you want lower military spending. We all know that Democrats and the MSM are totally on board with those ideas, so their views on thinking of gays and gay marriage are totally warranted.

He also points out that Republicans only like blacks that "don't remind anyone they are black". I guess that is sort of like Abdul Jabbar failing to remind people he is tall when he walks into a room. Tallness and being black aren't something apparent, they are much deeper issues. I can only assume that he means that Republicans only like blacks that don't "act black". If pedophilia is part of being gay, I'm wondering what he would require to be certifiably black? Drug use? A criminal record? The mind wanders, but for some reason black people like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powel just don't meet his definition. It must fail to include intelligence, dedication, character and career success. Pity, those are the kinds of attributes that evil Republicans find to be completely applicable to both gays and blacks.

Foregone Conclusion

In listening to MPR and looking at CNN on the Web, the message is out that "the only way the Republicans can keep control of the House or Senate is if the election is fixed". MPR is positively gleeful that from their polling, virtually every Republican out there including Pawlenty and our local Congressman are going to lose. They can already feel the anticipatory joy of beginning Bush impeachment proceedings.

They may certainly be right, they have used thousands of hours of airtime presenting that the economy is supposed to be bad in the face of record growth GDP, jobs and new market highs. They have presented Iraq as "another Vietnam", even though the casualty figures are an order of magnitude different, and the similarities in most every other way than the media seeing it as "hopeless" are completely DISsimilar. Any sort of Republican ethics issue has been presented as "an example of the corruption of the party", where many similar and worse Democrat issues ($90K of cash in a freezer, Harry Reid with land deals and using campaign funds for "the help") have been barely touched on. The media has fully done their job to fix this election, any allusions of being "even handed" have been fully left behind. It may well be enough.

The following gives another view. It has already been used on the left as "proof that Rove must have a deal with Dibold". I can't help but wonder if some of the certainty hasn't gone too far, and they may be keeping their own base at home because "this election is won for the Democrats". We shall see, even if they win the people that usually end up taking the biggest loss from their policies are the very people that they claim to be helping.

Rove Sees Victory

Karl Rove had lunch with the editors and reporters of the Washington Times yesterday. He apparently exuded confidence:

White House political strategist Karl Rove yesterday confidently predicted that the Republican Party would hold the House and the Senate in next month's elections, dismissing fallout from the sex scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley.

"I'm confident we're going to keep the Senate; I'm confident we're going to keep the House."

Rove said it s "almost impossible" for Democrats to take the Senate; he cited Jim Talent's race in Missouri as one that is moving in the right direction.

Rove's optimism stems in part from the Democrats' dismal record on national security:

"I think they have given us here, especially in the last couple of weeks, a potent set of votes to talk about. You had 90 percent of House Democrats voting against the terrorist-surveillance program, nearly three-quarters of Senate Democrats and 80 percent of House Democrats voting against the terrorist-interrogation act. Something is fundamentally flawed."

Rove also sees Republicans having the financial resources they need for the last three weeks of the campaign; he was confident enough to laugh at some mainstream media reports that exaggerate the Dems' chances:

In the hourlong interview, Mr. Rove was upbeat, telling stories from the campaign trail and joking about skewed political coverage that disproportionately shows Democrats poised to take control of Congress.

Mr. Rove said Republican candidates still hold a huge cash edge over Democrats, which will give them clout in the final three weeks of the campaign.

"This morning, I loved it: The [Associated Press] ran a story saying these Democrat congressional candidates outraised their Republican incumbents in the third quarter. Well, what they didn't say was that part of the reason that they did is that we raised the money earlier so that we'd be able to deploy it," he said.

Rove points out that for most of the undecided voters who will determine the outcome of the election, the campaign has only been going on for around two weeks. He notes that over the next 21 days, Republicans will spend $100 million in targeted House and Senate races.

Rove could be wrong, of course. But I think it is noteworthy that he is not laying the groundwork to deflect blame for defeat by, for example, moaning about the unforeseen consequences of the Foley instant message flap. Instead, he is once again staking his reputation on victory. I find that comforting.

A Pirate Looks at 50

While as I commented, Jimmy Buffett isn't very consistent, but I did enjoy the book. It is great that a guy that writes and sings songs, performs, and writes books can create a life as cool as his. Is he really happy? Well it sounds like after a lot of drugs and analysis, and finding a way to finally get along with his second wife, he just may be, at least at a superficial level.

He certainly comes in pretty well on the "he who dies with the most toys wins" scale. Having both a Cessna Citation and a Grumman Albatross is pretty big in the toy department, but it sounds like there are other planes in his private airforce as well. On top of that, houses in Key West, Long Island, Aspen, and it sounds like a Caribbean Island for two. Lack of money and things are not on his list of problems.

It seems that he has discovered a couple of hobbies that he cares about deeply: flying and fishing. He has the resources to be able to pursue those way farther than most people, but he is interested in personally doing well at both of them, and uses the money to help that with guides, co-pilots, training, equipment, etc, but he does get fulfillment out of the accomplishments. He enjoys music, performing, and in many cases the interactions with his fans.

Sort of like the song "Wasting Away in Margaritaville", he pretty much sells escape. The whole Caribbean, Gone Fishing, gone flying, on vacation mentality. He must be a good deal more of a businessman than he lets on, but that is probably part of the deal. To some degree, he IS the product. He is the poster child for the "Jimmy Buffett lifestyle".

The book is well written and fun. While it seems unlikely that the planet could support very many folks living his lifestyle, it is pretty amazing that there is one ... and he doesn't even feel rich!